Droves of Brooklynites lined up outside an abandoned lot at 485 Johnson Ave. in Bushwick for the Festival of Colors this past Saturday. Some wore GoPros, others wore Rastacaps. Everyone was dressed in white, eager to have their clothing stained with the throwing of brightly colored powder. This activity has come to represent the entirety of the Indian rite of spring, also known as “Holi,” for young people in America.

In South Asian countries with Hindu populations, particularly India and Nepal, Holi is observed religiously over a two-day period. Here in Brooklyn, it was celebrated non-denominationally over an eight-hour period — one consisting largely of playing with powder, eating from food trucks and drinking Tecate tallboys, at that. This weekend’s festival was predominantly white, with a vibe that felt more Coachella than New Delhi.

Naftai, 24, a first-time attendee, told us she saw an ad for the festival on her Facebook feed and recognized it instantly as the Indian ritual she’d once seen in a movie.

“I saw it on Eat Pray Love and I was like ‘I gotta go to this,'” she said. “I thought I had to go all the way to India to do it, but then they did it here.”

The event’s organizers claim that their festival is a positive way to bring Hindu culture to a wider audience. But can the commodification of this religious ritual be a positive thing? Or was this simply yet another example of cultural appropriation in Brooklyn?

Naftai said that the festival was “a beautiful way to celebrate spring” and that it provided one of those rare opportunities to “have fun with people as an adult.”

There was certainly no shortage of fun at the festival. Upon entry, you were given a single bag of colored powder to start with. If you weren’t covered in colors already, you stood out, so by the time you’d made a few rounds of the festival enclosure, you were covered by powder that other people had thrown onto you.

Before the event in Bushwick (now in its fifth year), Brokelyn spoke with one of its founding members, Jack Langerman. He explained the use of colored powder as a means by which the social “ice is melted” and said that the festival’s typical attendees were “people coming for the social contract agreement that we’ve all made, that this is going to be a day where the social norms and rules don’t exist.”

So is this what Holi is all about? Throwing powder onto strangers as a form of ice-breaker and an expression free love? Well, not exactly.

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It’s not just peace, love and pattycake. Maria Travis / Brokelyn

Holi is a religious spring festival that some believe dates back to hundreds of centuries B.C. Its legends are rooted in Hindu scripture. There are two rituals central to the holiday: a bonfire the night before Holi to purge evil spirits, and a colored powder-throwing celebration day-of to celebrate spring (and the metaphors of forgiveness and renewal therein). Americans often celebrate only the latter part of this festival, and do so seemingly without consciousness of the holiday’s history or its cultural roots in Hinduism. Because of this, American derivations of the festival often come under fire as instances of cultural appropriation and “whitewashing” of Holi. [Update: We should note that actual Holi took place on March 24 this year.]

“Just because you throw colored powder around, doesn’t mean you are celebrating Holi,” Priya Patel, a Bed-Stuy resident of Indian descent told us. She shared her own personal history with Holi as a counterpoint:

“My family used to go to a Hindu temple is Jersey City which was about a two and a half hour drive from our home. We had low key celebrations in the parking lot after service with dholaks and kirtans on blast. It was fun, [but] it was definitely a smaller scale operation. I never would have thought that 15 years later, hip white people would be jacking this very community-centered and meaningful holiday, sequestering themselves in an empty Williamsburg parking lot and raging out in the name of some vague sense of ‘oneness.'”

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It was this kind of thing. Maria Travis /Brokelyn

In some cases at this weekend’s festival, it was even more vague than that. Brokelyn spoke to another pair of ladies from Bay Ridge who were waiting to get on top of the “Quetzal bus,” a school bus spray painted purple and gutted to be re-purposed as a partying platform. They were clad in white robes that looked almost religious in nature. Like Naftai, they were first-time attendees, and told us they’d also found out about it from their Facebook feeds.

When I asked them whether they were here for the religious observation of Holi, they both shook their heads, and one replied: “I just wanna get colored!”

Langerman told us that his idea to celebrate Holi in New York was inspired by watching videos of the celebration in India that he’d seen on YouTube. The event’s first incarnation was, in his words, a “ratchet” indoor party thrown together in nine days and with a modest attendance of a few hundred people. In this fifth year, Langerman’s festival drew a crowd of almost 4,000 revelers over the course of its eight hours.

As far as addressing accusations of cultural appropriation, Langerman was sheepish but unapologetic.

“I try to be as understanding and respectful of their views as possible,” he said. “I understand, given the fact that I’m not Hindu, I’m some white kid who grew up in New York. I understand why that’s bothersome. All I can say is, Hindus figured out the best way to celebrate spring. It brings people together in a really magical way. And the underlying values — breaking down social barriers, coming together, burying old hatchets — those are universal values. I love it so much and think it’s so good that I wanna share it. Maybe I’m not the right guy but I’m the guy who’s doing it.”

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Throw your powder in the air like you just doesn’t care. (He probably doesn’t.) Maria Travis / Brokelyn

Critics say this is the very definition of appropriation: taking only what is easiest to like from a cultural celebration in order to go play with it somewhere else. So Langerman’s explanation doesn’t win him any sympathy with Patel.

“It’s truly colonial to say ‘Look at this cool thing I discovered that’s been around for thousands of years, let me share it the way that I want to share it!'” she said. “I’m sure he’s a decent enough guy, but you have to admit there is a definite lack of awareness.”

Still, others share Langerman’s view. We spoke to a pair of older women who were taking in the action from the sidelines, seated in canvas lawn chairs. Sue and Tammy, both in their mid-60s, were visiting from New Jersey and the Bronx, respectively. Tammy’s son was one of the other event organizers, and this was her third year attending the festival. I asked Tammy whether she saw the organizers’ efforts as misguided.

“All they wanna do is have fun today,” she replied. “I’m a child of the 60s, so this to me is just peace, love and happiness.”

We also hung out with Bart, another parent of one of the organizers. (He shared with us that the boys’ families had been friends since the boys were Eagle Scouts together.) Like Sue and Tammy, Bart was in his mid-60s; but he seemed as eager to be powder-doused as the festival’s younger clientele. At one point he even suggested we get in line to climb on top of the party bus. While we were waiting on line, he surveyed the scene. Then he leaned over and yelled, “This is harmless!”

I asked him what he meant by that. “Well, do you see anyone smoking weed?” he asked. “Do you see anyone spaced out?”

He wasn’t wrong; there was something kind of wholesome in the air. The festival’s attendees weren’t your typical Governors’ Ball or Electric Zoo ragers. These folks actually seemed sated by the central activity of powder-throwing, and the positive energy of the festival did seem to mirror Holi’s underlying values of forgiveness, unification and rebirth.

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A scene from the Phaghwah Parade in Richmond Hill, Queens in 2009. Roup Hardowar / Flickr

“Various temples in Queens celebrate Holi, but I don’t see a mass of Coachella folks running to the Phagwah Parade where you can find actual Indian people celebrating,” Patel responded. “It’s uncomfortable to see people who have never had a relationship with the holiday, let alone Hinduism, plunging in headfirst celebrating the aesthetics of it completely detached.”

Brokelyn reached out to Langerman again for further comment, but he didn’t respond.

Spoiler alert: there’s no jury presiding here. The conversation about whether Langerman’s festival should or shouldn’t exist is caught in the politics of relativism between Americans like Langerman who claim that Holi’s values are “universal,” and the members of the Hindu community who feel slighted by these “detached” interpretations of the holiday.

“It’s hard,” Patel admitted, “because on the one hand I feel like it’s more in line with the spirit of the holiday to be fine and happy with even appropriated events, because it’s at least attempting to spread the intended message. But damn, there’s a lack of brown in those crowds.”

26 Comments

“But can the commodifying of a religious ritual ever be a good thing?” – all rituals are commoditized, there is no such thing as “authentic” – Hipsters cloning a foreign festival is an authentic cultural experience on its own.

Anyways, white people need to get over themselves: You aren’t so goddamned important that using a foreign word/food/dress/language/celebration/religion does jack shit or invalidate that thing for any “authentic” practitioner. Just like a christmas celebration in India doesn’t invalidate an American/Western/Judeo-Christian celebration, or two gay people getting married does to uh, whatever it’s supposed to do to traditional marriage.

I feel Patel’s pain. Pretty soon we’ll have Cinco de Mayo and we’ll see a lot of non-Mexicans celebrating it the way they think Mexicans celebrate it: with sombreros, bandito mustaches, and pounding away Coronas.

Just spoke to my friends in Mexico City, where I will be in a few days. They tell me that Cinco deMayo is just a day to get off work. No mass parties at all in Mexico, only everywhere else in the world.

This is America, and we aspire to avoid the bigotry and caste system of an India or Victorian England. We come here to share our cultures, but also to flow into the single national culture. Why can’t people celebrate diversity? If you go to someone else’s festival and they welcome you, what is it for bigots to tell them to get out? Why divide us? We wish to be United States, and President Obama said in his inaugural address. But then someone who would write this piece, probably isn’t too happy we have a black president, either.

I am white and half irish in canada. Many other cultures celebrate Saint Patricks day and have for years. Many other cultures celebrate christmas and they are not christian, In fact 99.9% of canadians celebrate christmas so much for trying to ban our biggest holiday tradition. Even some muslim women get free xmas vouchers to buy things at xmas with xmas money from christians who run most of canada and many go to food banks and get free food from christian churches and many use welfare which was a christian idea and the money comes from the churches.

Lol well I think it was both, I mean weren’t many Indians there, but was fun, but come on relax not that serious. I’ve been to easter parties in Asia, hip hop concerts in Europe and seen Halloween ranmdomly celebrated around the world. I men everyone does it, it’s not that serous ppl are just having fun. :) A little cultural appropriation never hurt anyone.

Everything is cultural appropriation. Dreadlocks, jazz, tacos, pizza, coffee, Blackish… Can we stop having think pieces and faux-handwringing about it? It’s the fucking point of a society and culture to exchange and take and mash things up to make other things with or without their original intention. It’s how things move forward. If we rigidly kept stuff in separate boxes, how the fuck would we evolve or grow as people on a global scale? Fucking stop with this bullshit already. Everything is not terrible.

I am Indian and I agree that this is cultural appropriation, as soon as this is pointed out the defensive responses from westerners such as Chico who invoked the caste system.

I don’t appreciate the fact how these people most likely have no respect for Indians, wouldn’t associate themselves with Indians on any level but then say things like ‘We are all human and we should celebrate our connection with each other’ – Why can’t they stick to the colour run instead?

I am a westerner who follows Indian culture closely. I am studying to become a Hindu. I am studying to learn Hindi. I have an Indian bf and delve into Indian religious and cultural events whenever possible. I also donate money and help many schools in Rajasthan.
You tell me how squirting women with water (and creating a wet tee shirt/wet tight, clinging clothing) is religious? Are you aware a man in India was throwing balloons full of semen in them at women? How is that religious?

Nah, i’m an Indian and I don’t care about cultural appropriation. Ok, yeah it exists. But when we celebrate or try to celebrate Christmas, we don’t follow any of the rules. No trees. No mistletoe.
I couldn’t bother less cuz I am an atheist.
But isn’t this two faced? Why should they follow all our customs when we don’t follow any of their customs?
Guys I support you, yeah I liked throwing colours when I was a kid but now I just sleep through it.

Actually who gives a rats ass about holi. THIS is America. Today is the birthday of Dr. Seuss. everyone can celebrate that, even white people. Who wrote this article anyway and what kind of stupid question is “ca/should white people be “allowed” to celebrate? WTF people…???

“Damn there’s a lack of brown” pretty much sums it up. Just because you’re brown doesn’t mean you have connections to Hinduism, and just because you’re white doesn’t mean you don’t. I mean, if I was a gamblin’ man, I’d bet on the stereotypes. But if you’re going to get upset because the crowd it too white…

If people can’t take what they like from tradition and leave the shitty parts, then society stagnates. And maybe there’s a case for why the traditional celebration is better, but if that’s so, make an argument for that, and don’t just bitch about “cultural appropriation” like that should actually mean something.

This article is a travesty to the spirit of Holi.
If these guys were coloring themselves silly and calling it Holi, more power to them.
I, as a Hindu born in India and living in the US, would LOVE for it to become more mainstream.
I welcome anything that allows me to show my kids that being good, and giving gifts to others, so that Santa gets you gifts on Christmas is not the only culture to aspire to here. There can be many paths to achieve a happy life, and engaging strangers in a riot of color on a beautiful spring day is a nice way to try.
If Ms. Priya Patel person is a practicing Hindu, and not something created out of the writer’s imagination, I hope she is prepared for some awkward karma heading her way. Her perspective of “only some people have monopoly on some types of culture” is not what is going to help her, or my, kids get better integrated into this nation, or even the world at large. Talk about abject ingratitude… (sheeeesh!)

What a party-pooper this Priya Patel is. Let people have some fun. What’s her problem. FYI, Ms. Patel, even in India hardly anyone celebrates Holi with religion or spirituality in mind.
Kudos to Jack Langerman for organizing this for five years running. I bet that’s not easy and he deserves praise.

Please appropriate Hinduism as much as you like! Holi is about celebration and getting together. Hinduism has been around for thousands of years and Hindus have welcomed people of all religions into their homes, and we have been welcomed in different countries because we are open-minded and mix with the people of those countries. The Hindu nationalists have arisen in India as a reaction to Muslim Fundamentalism, and in my opinion ALL fundamentalists, whatever religion, do not understand love, kindness, togetherness and morality are what religion is about. I’m a Hindu, and you are welcome ALWAYS.

While I am studying to become a Hindu, even this article is not telling all of the story. It is about Krishna too and why his skin turned blue. The coloring part has just become all out fun for many. I don’t find squirting people, especially women with water (wet tee shirts) religious in nature at all. So it has evolved into a fun thing many people recognize as the coming of spring and all its colors, that is still okay. The wet tee shirt thing, not so okay.